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I don't mind having a lot of different humanoid aliens, and I have no problem with 'Forehead alien of the week'. The premises of all the shows except DS9 pretty much demanded different aliens to be present every week, otherwise they wouldn't have been exploration shows.

They should have created a little bit more variety in aliens. Different skin tones, more monstrous looking by human standards. I think the writers felt that the more monstrous looking an alien the less sympathetic that alien would be to the viewers, which kind of goes against the very idea behind the show.

And they could have been more creative with their attractive female actresses, they could have made them look more alien without making them look unsexy. I suppose colored makeup makes their skin look less smooth, but did their range of hair color have to be identical to humans? Give Jadzia blue hair or something. Or maybe Bajorans come in three colors, pink, blue, and green. The pink just happens to be the same tone as caucasian humans, and hey we have this hot caucasian actress, but then there are also blue Bajorans hanging around.

And they could have been more creative with their attractive female actresses, they could have made them look more alien without making them look unsexy. I suppose colored makeup makes their skin look less smooth, but did their range of hair color have to be identical to humans? Give Jadzia blue hair or something.

Until Marina Sirtis was instructed to come up with a Betazoid accent, there were plans to develop a relatively simply alien latex application for her character. Hence Gropler Zorn's "You have brought a Betazoid to this meeting" scripted complaint. The writers were assuming an alien look would be present. Surely, just having black irises would not be such a sudden, significant indication to Zorn - unless he could also sense Troi's empathic powers?

Until Marina Sirtis was instructed to come up with a Betazoid accent, there were plans to develop a relatively simply alien latex application for her character. Hence Gropler Zorn's "You have brought a Betazoid to this meeting" scripted complaint. The writers were assuming an alien look would be present. Surely, just having black irises would not be such a sudden, significant indication to Zorn - unless he could also sense Troi's empathic powers?

I remember that scene, but I always just thought Zorn had learned in advance that Picard had a Betazoid aide with him on the Enterprise.

__________________"Don't sweat the small stuff--it makes you small-minded..."

As to why there are so many humanoid aliens? Well, I venture to guess that for the environment that is natural for humans, it lends itself palatable for other humanoids. Thus, you see plenty of them around. There are exceptions, like the Breen who need to be contained in their own environment suit and are still humanoid in shape. Lastly, it's just so much easier to throw a few prosthetic pieces on a human being and go with that than to conjure up some elaborate costume that a person needs to crawl inside. Despite the high budgets of the shows, there is only so far you can go...

Nah. You do what you can with the budget you have, the restrictions of the mediums you're working with and the time you have to get it done.

In some cases all it really would have taken would have been a piece of dialog. If (for example) they had consistently referred to Mister Sulu as being an alien, coming from a non-Human species, he would have been. Might have explained the blue eyelids too.

JirinPanthosa wrote:

They should have created a little bit more variety in aliens. Different skin tones, more monstrous looking by human standards.

I've thought that they could have done more simply by hiring actors/actresses who were not of standard body size. Painfully thin, or unusually tall, or huge bulky people, hire children to depict alien adults.

A prosthetic under the starfleet costume to present spinal ridges (or three breasts) wouldn't have to stand up to close examination.

I've thought that they could have done more simply by hiring actors/actresses who were not of standard body size. Painfully thin, or unusually tall, or huge bulky people, hire children to depict alien adults.

I sometimes got annoyed by the slightly-modified-alien-of-the-week formula that crept into VOYAGER. But I still liked the show.

One piece of trivia I picked up from a behind the scenes feature somewhere: during the period when they had two TV series in production at the same time, the STAR TREK make-up department was buying liquid latex for facial appliances by the 55-gallon drum. That's a lot of foreheads.

Totally disagree! Of course, many were over-the-head, non-articulated masks, so they were destined to remain in the background (like Morn in DS9), but I loved them, and their ambassadorial robes as well.